Monday, July 22, 2013

So now we are at our two week checkup. My, how time
flies!! Here are his stats for this week:

Weight:

Height:

Head Circumference:

Dr. Smolen is awesome! He has really made this transition
really easy all the way around. This week we had a couple of questions for him.
One would be how long do you let them cry? I know that babies need to
self-soothe sometimes – and then there are times when you just need to step
away because you need a time out. Especially since the crib situation was still
up in the air. He said that after 15 minutes you need to pick him up because at
that point he’s not going to settle down. We’ve really been blessed with such an
easy baby. He is really perfect. So whenever he cries it’s usually because
something is wrong. Unless we’re putting him in his crib and then he wants to
scream. But we’ve been making great progress and he’s slept in there for the
past week.

Our next question involved about when we could “go
public” with the baby. Dr. S has a blog that he updates often and it’s been
really helpful for us. Uncle Tracy was in town and they were having a going
away dinner with all of the family. I was super stressed about this because
that was a lot of people and a LOT of germs! For some reason, all I could
picture in my head was big clouds of green germs coming from people’s mouths
being blown all in his face. Although there is no standard for when to take
your child out he recommends 3 months out of the public and also said to keep
small children away. He told us that we should make him out to be the bad guy
on this – okay buddy, no problem! He explained his strictness like this: if a
newborn under the age of 3 months gets a fever, they don’t go to the
pediatrician’s office. They are sent straight to the hospital. At the hospital,
they will receive a spinal tap. They have to do all these steps and it is
extremely painful for the little guys. Lots of tears and LOTS of money. What is
the definition of public? No churches, and no group gatherings. Only close
friends and families. He also said that it would be better to go to the mall or
in public places rather than to go to church. If you think about it, a lot of
people in the mall or restaurants are more likely to respect your space. People
at church want to see and hold him which passes off more germs and he will be
more likely to get sick. The end result? Don’t go out in public for 3 months.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Right before our checkup, we had our newborn session from our good friend and AWESOME photographer Stephanie Aldridge from Stephanie Aldridge Photography. She is seriously the BEST! If you’re looking for someone to do pics, she’s the lady you need to book!! We had a time “hiding the sausage” in his pics. He did not care who saw his junk! He just loves to be naked! Here are some of my favorites:

Monday, July 15, 2013

The first week is the scariest. The doctors and nurses
are great in the hospital. So great that I did not want to leave. I felt like
they just gave us M and said, “Good luck.” I wanted to run back in and tell
them that we don’t know what we’re doing!! But my mother said that everything
is learned and we’d be just fine on our own. Hands down, it is the scariest
thing in my entire life.

When we came home from the hospital we had our first
doctor’s visit. They informed us that we needed to have at least 30 minutes to
an hour of tummy time and outside time each day. Most people think that the
tummy time is for them to increase their neck muscles – which is true. But it’s
mostly for them to rest on their tummies so that they won’t get soft spots on
the back of their heads. Here are his stats:

Weight:

Length:

Head Circumference:

I was also really nervous because the number one thing
that everyone was always telling me was “get your sleep because you’re not
going to get any, etc.” It annoyed the crap out of me. And to tell you the
truth, it was not as bad as everyone made it out to be. Yes, I was tired. But
my husband and I made it work.

One thing they don’t tell you, none of your clothes fit.
I have nothing to wear. I have maybe 3 things of my maternity clothes that fit
and it doesn’t look like maternity clothes (sigh). BUT I am NOT going shopping
because I have got to get rid of these extra pounds!!

I am so thankful for my husband. He has been SO awesome!
He has done everything he could to help me. And it’s been hard because most of
the time it’s only things that I can do. I feel kind of bad for the guys,
because they want to help us out but there’s nothing they can do. They are
really only needed when it comes down to changing a dirty diaper or watching
over the baby when he’s sleeping. I am the one that has to nurse him. He really
only eats and poops. And he usually eats and poops at the same time so 95% of
watching him falls on me. But even at that, it really hasn’t been that bad.

The biggest problem that we’ve had is getting him to
sleep in his crib at night. The doctor told us that the AAP suggests that the
first 4 weeks the baby should sleep in the parent’s room. Not in the bed, but
have his crib/bassinet in their room. Well, we did not like because we’ve
agreed from Day 1 that he will be sleeping in his room. For us, we are
establishing that this is his room and our room is “Mommy and Daddy domain.”
However, every time that we put him down in his crib he screamed bloody murder.
We would even try to let him scream it out but after 15-20 minutes he had
worked himself up so much that he was not calming down and I would have to go
in and pick him up. So the first two nights at home that we tried this M slept
on my chest after screaming his head off for so long in his crib. After that we
put his bassinet in our room so we could experiment. We tried everything: he
liked his car seat so we put him in that in his bassinet, we swaddled, we let
him have his arms out, we tucked the blanket across him on each side of the
mattress, we put his bouncy in the bassinet, he liked sleeping on his stomach
so we tried that, we put a towel in the sides of the bassinet, we did it ALL.
He would not have it. So finally, after a few days for some reason it just
clicked and he seemed to be okay with it. We swaddled him with his arms out and
he has since been sleeping in his crib every night – SUCCESS IS OURS!!!